All posts tagged: food

Our Growing Edge – An Intro

Published by

Dear Food Bloggers and bloggers who also happen to like food, I would like to introduce to you a concept I’ve been nibbling on for some time. We all have bucket lists. Whether they’re written down somewhere or kept in our heads and hearts. Our Growing Edge is the part of us that is still learning and experimenting. It’s the part that you regularly grow and improve, be it from real passion or a conscious effort. This monthly event aims to connect and inspire us to try new things. Who can join? This blogging event is open to anyone. It is not a competition and there are no prizes or winners, it is just a way  to share new experiences. You do not have to commit every month, only when you have something to share. The host will do a write up and a round up on the first of the following month on their blog. If you would like to host a month, please email me or comment below. Submissions To enter, you must blog about …

A sucker for scallops wrapped in bacon

Published by

I’ve been gorging on seafood and booze all weekend and today is the final day of the Auckland Seafood Feastival. Please note, it wasn’t until late afternoon that I realised that it was a feastival rather than a festival. On a blue skied Saturday, I attended with my three of my friends at the opening time of 11am and we didn’t leave until closing around 6pm. I would say we gave it a mighty good bash. Scampi Street I’d been raving about Scampi Street since last year so we grabbed two plates of BBQ scampi to share. Scampi Street was slightly relocated this year and didn’t have the same “street” or alley feel. I recently learned that scampi are known as langoustine so if you know that term for it, you’ll know that these are sweet and fleshy and can be good eating. The scampi were smaller than last year’s and were not cut in half (crayfish style) for easy eating. The result was messy and a little disappointing. After I’d hyped it up so …

Cream cheese stuffed mushrooms

Published by

I have no idea when I moved from the mushroom hating camp to the mushroom loving camp, but I love them fiercely now. There’s something uniquely satisfying about popping a whole stuffed mushroom into your mouth. Maybe it’s the piggish feeling that I like so much. I first tried these stuffed mushrooms when my sister cooked for us a couple of summers ago. My sister Joey can bake and cook. Her version had streaky bacon weaved throughout but I decided to try and make something similar sans-bacon. Not because I’m against bacon, not at all. But even a meat eater can enjoy these tasty vegetarian morsels. Mushroom hating camp may still not be convinced. These stuffed mushrooms are a summer BBQ winner. These can be made a day ahead and they cook quickly on the BBQ so you can pop these on the BBQ just before everything else as a tasty pre-dinner snack. They’re easy to make ideal if you want to employ any idle hands floating around your kitchen. My 30 mushrooms is just …

Dreaming of plump, sweet scampi

Published by

Auckland Anniversary means that our little city enjoys a 3 day weekend. This mid-Summer holiday means locals flock to the beach and the outdoors and gorge on fine food and booze (New Years resolutions already forgotten). If you’re interested in feasting on incredibly fresh, beautifully cooked seafood, head down to Halsey Wharf at Wynyard Quarter next weekend for the Auckland Seafood Festival. A community project with proceeds going to local charities, there’s all sorts of good juju in attending this festival. Not to be missed if you love seafood. With over 65 seafood dishes on the menu there is surely several dishes to tickle the tastebuds of seafood lovers. The Wild Seafood Challenge is on again and for $12 a good way to tick off some seafood boxes. This year’s Wild Seafood Challenge includes: Raw Kina Marinated Sea Cucumber in Coconut with Ginelli’s Lemon, Lime and Cucumber Sorbet Marinated Grilled small fish with Kawakawa aioli Grilled Octopus The Mussel Mary with Ginelli’s Champagne sorbet Grilled Scampi Last year’s super popular Scampi Street will be back and …

Mozzarella Pizza

Published by

After making Caprese Salad with my home made mozzarella, I still had about a third of the 250 grams of cheese left. There is no such thing as leftover cheese in this household and pizza is a surefire way to use up cheese. I always keep a packet of tortillas in the freezer and they’re great for pizza as you don’t need to defrost. Just start loading up with toppings and by the time you’re ready to pop into your pre-heated oven, they’re already defrosted. Four decent sized blobs of mozzarella dotted each of our four pizzas as well as prawn, capsicum, mushroom, onion, garlic, basil and tomato/mayo sauce. A perfect way to use fresh mozzarella.

Caprese Salad

Published by

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event I have started to encourage us to try new food related things. If you have a blog and have tried something new this month, come and join this event. I put Caprese Salad on my Summer To Do List because I always loved the simple, contrasting ingredients. Summer tomatoes + soft milky mozzarella fior di latte + green fragrant basil. It looked easy but I’d never made it before. Since I just made mozzarella fior di latte from scratch, Caprese seemed to be the perfect way to enjoy it. The gist of it: Cut the mozzarella and ripe truss tomatoes into thick slices. Alternate slices on a platter. Tuck fresh whole basil leaves here and there. Finish off with a drizzle of good quality extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and black pepper. Dig in with forks 🙂 Check back tomorrow to see what I made with the rest of the mozzarella.

Notes on Mozzarella

Published by

I couldn’t stand that mozzarella eluded me. Not one to admit defeat, I tried making mozzarella one more time. Much better results! A single ball of mozzarella – enough for a meal or two – can easily set you back $10 or $15NZ.  The unhomogenised farmhouse milk I bought from our supermarket was expensive at $5 for a 2 litre bottle, makes about 250grams of mozzarella so worth the effort. I’m no expert on mozzarella, but I believe failures and learning how to correct failures give you a better understanding of the process. Failures make you better at what you do. If you never fail at something, you might never know how to correct something if it one day all goes horribly wrong. This time I used the recipe by Allison from Pease Pudding, combined with my previous research. I had to add 0.5ml of calcium chloride to Allison’s recipe as my curds refused to form even after half an hour. 5 tips on making mozzarella: If your curds refuse to form, add 0.5ml calcium …

Macadamia Pesto (by hand)

Published by

Pesto is one of those things I buy all the time and I often wonder if it’s worth the price for what you get. Pine nuts are ridiculously expensive and with a macadamia nut tree in our backyard, I figured I should try to make some macadamia nut pesto. The macadamia nuts I harvested from our tree about 6 months ago are now dry are ready for eating. The nuts haven’t been roasted, but in their raw state, the are great for pesto. Let me start off by admitting I don’t own a food processor. I had one once but I never used it so I gave it away. This pesto recipe is all choppped by hand which doesn’t take long at all, but would be faster if you let a machine do the chopping. Saying that, it’s also really satisfying chopping up a whole bunch of stuff. I mixed this batch of pesto with a pan of whole button mushrooms and baked for 20 minutes in an 180°C / 350°F oven but this would …

Scallops Bacon, Bacon Scallops

Published by

Is there anything quite as decadent as a mouthful of scallop and bacon? A fresh, sweet scallop and a smokey salty streaky bacon. Oh gawd. Scallop season here in New Zealand starts from late August and runs right through until February. The most common is known as the Nelson scallop, though most people here just call these “scallops”. Now that I’ve had both the tiny queen scallop and the popular Nelson scallop, I am confident that the Nelson scallop is lovelier by miles. They are our default scallop for a good reason! Market value is roughly $1NZ / $0.82US per scallop which makes them a treat, but affordable every now and then. Part of what makes them good value is how easy they are to cook. I don’t like things that are both expensive and difficult to cook. Nelson scallops are sold and eaten with the bright orange coral or roe. When at their peak, they are both rich and sweet. Nelson scallops are small, averaging just 30 to 40mm (1.2″ to 1.6″) and are …

Artichoke Dip

Published by

I’ve always wondered what artichokes were like and while I’m sure that fresh artichokes are different to the canned ones, I tested the canned ones yesterday because they were easily accessible and required no messy leaf scraping. What do canned artichokes taste like? The canned stuff has the textured of leeks and tastes a little like leek in a light brine. I was hoping for something stronger flavoured. I whipped up this artichoke dip on a sunny afternoon when we had some friends over. It didn’t take long at all and would go well with crackers, bread, crudites or with a platter. We also had a dollap on the side of some crumbed, pan-fried fish. It was really good. I admit, it’s mostly fat so resist the urge to eat all of it by yourself. Artichoke Dip Makes a party sized bowl  Ingredients 1 tub of cream cheese (250g) 1 can artichoke hearts (390g) 1 cup finely grated parmesan 2 tablespoons mayonnaise 1 clove garlic, finely chopped Optional: Salt Preparation Warm the cream cheese in …

Spicy Sausage and Broad Bean (fava) Pasta

Published by

Broad beans are also known as fava beans and though I didn’t plant any this year, someone at work brought in bounty of beans so I squirreled some home. I’m not much of a gardener so I need encouragement or inspiration to grow things. The low yield for work of fava beans turned me off growing them but if it’s free, I’ll take it! Like most households, we always have a few bags of pasta in stock. Actually, right now we have four varieties of pasta. A 500 gram (1 pound) bag of spaghetti should feed five people, but I always cook half a bag of spaghetti which equals to 250 grams. We always get a portion of leftovers for my lunch the next day and I figure a free lunch is good. We’re a two person household so splitting a bag into five portions is nonsensical to me. I used spaghetti, but use whatever pasta shape you like. The sauce is thick and robust and will stick to any pasta like glue. There’s nothing watery …

Mini Party Scones

Published by

Do not trust these seemingly innocent baked goods. Mini items are deceptive. Because they’re so small, they hardly count as food. So you pop one of babies into your mouth each time you walk by and before you know it, you’ve eaten ten. True story. It happened to me and it may happen to you. Scones are not too different in composition from the American biscuit, though they’re usually eaten differently. Cheap and filling, they’re never far away from the menus of cafes and lunchrooms and often one of the first things a child will bake in school cooking class. Sometimes there are different ways to say a word: the posh way and the common way. I’ve always called a scone a “skon” which rhymes with con, swan and Tron, but the posh way to pronounce it would be to call it a “skone” rhymes with bone, phone and loan. I play pretend posh and I jokingly call it “skone” so often that it’s part of my vocabulary now. So call it “skon” or “skone”, …

Everything is too delicious – Taste 2012

Published by

It’s my birthday week and I’ll go to a bunch of awesome foodie events if I want to. I love this shiz. Food, wine, good music and the best company. Yes please! My friends Coco and Livvy went with me to opening night tonight. Taste of Auckland started today at Victoria Park, Auckland City and boy what a treat. Coco is a seasoned Taste veteran like me and it was Livvy’s first time. We are all pretty adventurous eaters so it was fun to share our dishes. We arrived keen as beans, just after 5.30pm and stayed until the 9.30pm closing. I would recommend the full 4 hours to get a well paced walk through and a class or two of your choice. The weather was perfect with only a the tiniest hint of drizzle later in the evening. Not enough for us to head to shelter or pull out umbrellas. From the 11 restaurants represented, we tried 9 dishes from 9 restaurants. Not bad, maybe with an extra person we could have made it to …

Taste of Auckland is almost here

Published by

Taste of Auckland at Victoria kicks off tomorrow and runs through until Sunday. Last year it coincided with the Rugby World Cup with an additional Taste at The Cloud event and was renamed Taste of New Zealand, but this year it is back to it’s original name. I look forward to this every year because it’s just another excuse to be a glutton. Seriously though, the food at Taste is stunning to look at a even better to eat. It’s different to The Food Show as it is more fine dining and gourmet products. I think of The Food Show as the supermarket expo and Taste as the fine dining and gourmet expo. What’s on There are various masterclasses: whiskey, coffee and cocktails as well as chef cooking demonstrations on stage. This year, 11 restaurants will be featuring 3 dishes each at about $8-12 a plate. Gourmet food, wine and booze producers will also be out in full force and Taste is always a great opportunity to taste new things and grab bargains. The Menu The awesome thing about …

October Book Review: How to Eat a Small Country: A Family’s Pursuit of Happiness, One Meal at a Time by Amy Finlay

Published by

How to Eat a Small Country: A Family’s Pursuit of Happiness, One Meal at a Time by Amy Finlay, 2011. I picked up this book from Amazon a few months ago and I’ve been savouring it ever since. I dream of eating my way around the world and Amy’s escape to France really appealed to me. A mouth watering, sometimes icky account of a mother’s culinary tour around the romantic French countryside to save her sanity, her family and her marriage. Amy is not your typical American foodie. She’s adventurous, strong willed and very creative. If you like reading to whet your appetite, this book is for you. She bares it all and it’s books like these that make me sad that people don’t read much anymore. This is not a stuffy touchy feely book, but it sure cuts and makes you feel. She doesn’t have all the answers and her writing style reminds us that we’re all just doing what we can. Read this if you… If you’ve been to France and want to …

Lamb Sausages and Grapes

Published by

Lamb is getting cheaper and cheaper here in NZ and I suspect it’s to do with our strong kiwi dollar. A lot of the lamb raised here gets shipped off to overseas markets so it’s a treat to be able to afford it. Still, if you don’t want the commitment of a whole lamb leg, lamb sausages are a cheap and tasty way to eat lamb. Nosh Food Market usually put a different sausage on special each week and last week was their really good lamb sausages for $11 kg. Nosh’s Black Rock Butchery are surprisingly good and their specials are very good and it’s no small feat that Nosh recently won the NZ Ham of the Year prize at the annual 100% Bacon and Ham competition. At Nosh, you can ask the butcher real foodie questions, like portion sizes and their cooking reccomendations. A stark contrast to the supermarket where I once asked the lady behind the seafood counter if they had any flounder left (on special that week). She did not know what …

No love

Published by

When you can’t decide what to order at an unfamiliar place, I’ve always figured your best bet is to go with their specialty. At a steak house? Order steak. Sushi shop? Order sushi. It should be a no brainer. If in doubt, don’t order the seafood platter in a burger joint. Don’t order the cheeseburger in a fish and chip shop. Both will usually contain frozen elements and possibly nuked back to life. There’s a trend for places to offer too wide a menu and instead of doing a few really things well, they do many things badly or average at best. An Australian coffee chain was offering “authentic” Thai cuisine not long ago. Really? I wish I could have a Thai fish cake with my espresso…said no one ever. The other day I went out for lunch with The Koala. Going out for lunch is a treat that every worker should reward themselves with once in a while. It breaks up the day and for a moment during the week, you can pretend you don’t …

Attempt Mozzarella

Published by

Last week, a friend delivered some raw, organic milk to us. Lucky! They were struggling to get through the milk this week with some family away and the cow producing a whopping four to six litres a day. A day! That’s mind boggling to me. The Koala and I can go through one day’s worth in a week if we try really hard. With that in mind, sharing a milking cow with up to six other households would be wonderful. Still on the cheese making buzz, I tried my hand at mozzarella. Something must have gone terribly awry because the texture wasn’t the mozzarella I was hoping for. Instead, the nubbly, slightly crumbly, cauliflower-like balls firmed up into firm white rubber. Not my finest cheese making moment, but if anyone is looking for cheese that looks like cauliflower, look no further! Still, we grated it and melted it onto home made pizzas: smoked chicken and black olive, smoked salmon and capers. It tasted just fine. I made pizza dough for the first time in forever …

Make Hollandaise Sauce

Published by

I made a ten egg hollandaise sauce once. Don’t be impressed, it wasn’t my intention. Years ago, long before I got into cooking, I tried to make hollandaise sauce. The sauce split on me. The recipe I found had the tip to salvage split sauce by adding it to egg yolks in place of butter. So I took my split sauce and added it to two egg yolks. It failed. So I tried to salvage it again. Ten eggs later, I had ten egg hollandaise sauce. That experience meant that for years, I didn’t attempt hollandaise sauce again for fear it would take ten eggs to get right. Well, it was time to put on my big girl pants and give it another try. Here in New Zealand, Eggs Bennie (Benedict) are held in high regard. On their own or with couple of strips of streaky bacon or smoked salmon and the compulsory toast or toasted English muffin, this dish can be found in cafes in every nook and cranny of the country. It takes …